Jaya He.

This is what is great about Bombay. The fact that two single girls can go for a movie show at 11:15 pm, then sit at Worli sea face and then saunter into Home. Had gone to watch “17 Again”. Zac Effron is serious eye candy material!

But that’s not the point.

Here is what happened. We all got up for the National Anthem to be played before the movie began. The guy next to me looked like the ones whose attitude and looks scream, “I’m livin the good life mate!”

The sorry piece of crap first of all complained that what was the need for the National Anthem to be played at the movies, was moving about when it was being played and was the first one to sit down even before it ended. I was livid.

I wanted wild rabid dogs to spit on him.
I wanted diarrhea-ridden crows to poo on him.
I wanted his face to be mauled in scum. (I settled for spilling his coke on the ground).

Seriously guys, what sort of a generation are we? A generation that doesn’t even respect its National Anthem? What sort of a Rolex possessing, Viao handling, Blackberry scrolling, Davidoff sprinkling, Armani caressing, confused bumbling identity crisis are we in, where our Country means nothing more than two letters to be keyed in while filling out some ‘Hajaar’ application forms. All that a dastardly incident like 26/11 can get out of us is a few minutes of apathetic sympathy and meaningless candle lighting a week later.

Supposedly there is a controversy surrounding our National Anthem wherein many Hindutva zealots’ claim that the Jana Gana Mana is actually a song composed by Rabindra Nath Tagore commemorating the visit of King George V and his Queen and not celebrating our Motherland. So what? It has been our National anthem for 59+ years and will continue to be so. Why?

Because it gives us an identity.
Because it is a common thread between the Bahadur who keeps a night vigil in your society and the Ambani sleeping tight on his quilt embracing bed.
Because it encompasses all: an ULFA terrorist, an Andhra naxal, a deobandhi fatalist, and a dogmatic SwayamSevak.
Because it speaks of a common brotherhood.
Because it speaks of a common History.
And most of all because it is OURs for the taking, keeping and safeguarding.

Whenever I hear or sing the National Anthem, it infuses in me a very poignant sense of belonging that cannot possibly be explained in words. This beautiful country where only paradoxes exist, where duplicity and treachery go hand in hand with Athithi Devo Bhava, where snow capped peaks exist in tandem with arid deserts, where the worlds brightest minds interact with the illiterate and the oppressed on a routine basis, a country whose length and breadth cannot be traveled or experienced in one lifetime…..

I suppose such feelings are more pronounced in me because there isn’t a single part of India that I can lay claim to and call my own. A Tamilian by birth, a Tanjore Brahmin by descent, born and brought up in Jamshedpur in erstwhile Bihar and now in current Jharkhand, habituated to the colloquial Bihari Hindi more than the Iyer Tamil, having studied for four years in Poona, having loved and lived with Vada Paavs, cut chai and new found liberation, working for two years in Bangalore and managing with scant two words- “Kannada Gothilla”, resorting to accented English while in Chennai, getting pushed and mauled in Bombay local trains, celebrating Maharstra Day and Karnataka Day, rejoicing in day offs from school due to “Jharkhand Bandhs”, getting up at the crack of dawn for celebrating Deepawali and staying up till midnight bursting crackers for Diwali, kneeling down in genuflection at Vaishno Devi to being rendered speechless by the beauty of the Jog falls, rafting in the river Teesta to blushing at the paintings in Ellora, India seems more real to me, more mine than any of her subparts.

I cannot call myself a Tamilian, niether a Bihar born confused Tamilian ……(BBCT, cool na?!) nor a Puneri……My claim to History, in History is by virtue of my being born in this country. The sole tangible identity that I am sure of, proud of is the fact that I am an Indian. A country, whose existence far exceeds the combined sum of all its multiplicities.

I guess all that I am trying to say though the sudden written frenzy that has consumed me is that we cannot afford to be indifferent towards our Country. Cannot. Nope. At least have the decency to respect your National Anthem!!

And oh, before I end….
FYI: Jana Gana Mana Adhinayaka Jaya He…..The song was first sung in a session of the Congress in 1911. This session had decided to felicitate George V since he had announced the abrogation of the partition of Bengal, thereby conceding the success of the Swadeshi agitation, the first modern anti-colonial movement that had started in 1905. The closest translation to the very first lines go as, “We sing praises of the Dispenser of Human Destiny…. Who appears in every age”. This song was then followed by another song composed by Shri Rambhuj Choudhary which was solely in praise of King Geogre V. There was no real connection between the composition of the Jana Gana Mana and George V, except that the song was sung at an event which also felicitated the king.

And moreover, why would Tagore, a Nobel prize recipient, a die hard nationalist, the founder of the Swadeshi Shantiniketan….. compose a song steeped in servitude?? Think.

Dear God,

Anything, Anything to break the monotony of everyday,

The eternity of my ass glued to this chair,

The infinity of day and night,

The mundanity of routine,

The helplessness of inertia,

The frustration of wanting and not having.....

Please God,Please God,

Wings, God, Balls, Fearlessness God, Please God....

Tell me do I pop a pill and will I be impervious to rejection, dejection?

Will I take off..... can I take off......

Why did you make me so.... so..... so..... weak?

Filled with anxiety, apprehension, fears, nervousness, lassitude, apathy, indifference, complacency.

Every day is torture it is..... but by the end.... you become complacent about torture as well......

How could you? Its all your fault. You are a freakin pervert!

Let me go back to screen staring.

This is dystopia God. It is for me. This second of my sitting at this chair, staring at this screen, seems endless. Seems the future. Is the present and has been the past.....

If I am to remain this way, slash away, throttle the remaining vestiges of feeling, longing in me.... so that complacency becomes me...... Please God do it. Do it.

Do it.

Do it.

For me please. For me please.

I dont have the balls to break free.....

Krishna

The sun wanted to shield itself from the macabre; therefore it hid behind the candy floss clouds. The abode of the Lord had been defiled with the blood of an untouchable. The body was still there, blatantly and shamelessly laughing at the reign of the blasphemous. Birds of prey after acknowledging the deity in the inner sanctum, were relishing this unexpected bounty. Flies, cockroaches and other rodents were all present at the congregation. The temple priest torn between the anguish of committing the unpardonable sin of touching an untouchable’s carcass and the horror of incurring the Almighty’s wrath by letting the carcass defecate His home, had let the feast last for two whole days. Finally, shedding his impotence, he paid some Ahirs to shoot at the birds and clear away the body. As for the dried stains of red on the black granite of the temple...it would be difficult to efface their existence.

While the Priest was astute enough to claim that it was an untouchable’s corpse that was being ravaged, he proved incapable of determining the gender.... It was a beautiful girl who lay dead there. A girl whose saga of affliction, nobody in that remote village ever heard.

It was a household that spurned her. Her unpardonable fault being that alas…She was born as a She. They had lost her mother to the illness just after her birth. The child was born mute. Nobody really knew when or how she turned deaf. Some thought that her world was so devoid of love, laughter and music that the ears just decided to shut themselves to the rest of the world. So she stayed dumb, deaf and motherless, embracing her own solitude.

However, as wonton Irony would have it, the Girl was not without hope. Hope with its tenacious quality of seeping into the most dismal of all conditions, had touched her as well. She had once heard a flute, the notes rising in melodious harmony seducing her, enticing her, beckoning her to come and embrace the nameless. She had heard it just once. Once and never, never again. She clung to a hope, desperately; obsessively. A hope that one day, the dusky, beautiful God of the cowherds and shepherds would call her to Him. It was his love that pumped blood in her veins. It was her devotion that provided her sustenance.

Krishna, Krishna, she would meet Him one day.
She would meet Him one day.
She would meet Him one day.

When illusion becomes reality, happiness also becomes tangible. Decades were spent, yearning and waiting. That night when the Moon had waned to the minimal possible extent, she saw Him: olive skinned, broad- shouldered, slim-waisted and virile. Krishna so close, so near. He was talking to some villagers, his face lit like that of a cherub.

She could say they did not like Him. They avoided Him. They became agitated and nervous around Him. He was a foreigner, they said. A refugee. Another hapless victim from the aftermath of the war. Fools! Blundering, idiots! Ignoramuses! How could they not know…….

He was Krishna.
He was Kanha.
He was Gopal.
He was Giridhar.
He was real.
He was here.

A God, who had come to save her- from Her, from Them. He looked into her eyes and she felt longing. Longing that was familiar and yet laced with a sensation that was so alien. She danced in the rain that night, her feet following an eonian rhythm, her arms lifted while paying silent homage to him. He had come to her finally. He was standing beside her now, watching her with deep, hooded eyes.

He was Krishna. She was Radha as she danced, entranced.
He was Krishna. She was Meera as she touched his feet.

She let the cascading rivulets cleanse her. They poured in a steady stream - on her lustrous and curly locks, on her pliant lips parted wide in anticipation, on her aching and swollen breasts, between her thighs to the apex of her existence, on her numbed feet that were never stopping, never pausing. Pregnant with concupiscence, she beseeched him. He lifted her and laid her, warm and wet on the hard floor. Desire - deep and carnal - tore away the remaining folds of semblance and sanity.

After an era she heard the flute again. Kanha was playing it again. Life-giving symphony that was blending with the rain, seeping through the earth, entwining the trees, gently stroking human and animal...rising and being one with space. Every nerve, every cell came alive at his touch.

He was Krishna. She was Radha as she clung to him in blissful oblivion.
He was Krishna. She was Meera as she moved to him in peaceful submission.

He, potent and virile, plundered her softness. It was Fusion. It was Creation. Nudity, chastity, Pain and Want were offered at the altar of ardor. Every unblemished contour was tasted; every entreasured curve was explored. He surged within her as she rode the clouds and played with the waves.Fulfillment was sought in a spinning vortex of pleasure and pain. She, whose world of silence was stripped of all music, screamed out again and again and again in agony and ecstasy.

Everything faded into anonymity save for the man and woman. The creator, his creations, creating creations through their coition. One last spasm racked her as the mist cleared and light broke in.

He was gone when she woke up. There was no sign of him save for those imprinted on her body. She bore the brunt of the sun as it burned down on her, reprimanding her for her folly. The emptiness, her nakedness taunted her as the ache in her heart began to grow. He could not leave her now. Why now, when He had made her, His.

He was Krishna. She was Radha.
He was Krishna. She was Meera.
He was infinite. She…only human......

She saw him up there, his face flashing vividly amidst the limitless azure. She saw his hands, his arms held wide open in invitation. He called out to her. She heard him. He, clothed in an amber colored garment was waiting for her. He was fading into the union of the earth and the sky.

"Krishna!” she called.He kept walking.

"Krishna!" she pleaded.He kept walking.

"Krishna!" she screamed.He was but a blur in the distant horizon.

She would go to him. Krishna, Krishna, Krishna.
There was her tranquility, calling out to her.The last things she saw were the stains of red on the granite- the insignia of their union. Now her eyes were shut from the world.

The Plan.

Dear All,

(I know there arent many of you but nevertheless……)

I want to travel and I want to read. I want to love again and this time for the keeps. And I am going to start a blog about my travels. I am so technologically handicapped that sometimes I am forced to hate myself. So once I get blog savvy, my travelogue would also be worth a read. Ahoy there, Shri Heinrich Harrer!!

You guys must read it.